Waking
by Gerald Tarrant and Quicksilver
Summary: A Noin death scene. Lucrezia Noin dies in battle....


_Gundam Wing is property of Sotsu Agency, Bandai Studios, and TV Asahi. Sainan no Kekka and all original characters and plot copyright 2000 by Quicksilver and Gerald Tarrant. Please ask permission before reposting._

  
**SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING**

SAINAN NO KEKKA  
Waking: Noin

_"Everything is clearer now.  
Life is just a dream, you know-  
It's neverending."  
--Cowboy Bebop, Blue_

  
It was snowing when we stepped outside into the dawning morning, flakes of white clinging to my eyelashes and my cheeks and settling themselves on the small ledge between the bottom of my nose and upper lip. I stuck out my tongue, licked the collected snow from its resting place. Heard his footsteps from up ahead.

"Hurry…"

The snow swirled up for a moment in front of me and I shielded my face as the wind shrieked, sending a howling gusting of white into my eyes. They stung, as if burned with acid, and I blinked rapidly. Another gust of wind. I saw his eyes, blue against the white, and then he was gone again.

"Hurry…hurry!"

I struggled up the slope that had suddenly appeared on front of me, the landscape ahead a pure, virgin white, and the clouds were white also so that I could not tell where the snow ended and the sky began. The wind had slowed, and all I could feel was snow falling into my eyes and my hair and seeping in through the thick scarves I had bundled around my neck.

I had read somewhere that falling snow was not truly silent, but if it made sound now, I could not hear it.

I reached out my hand as I took the last laborious step to the top of the hill and gripped the outstretched fingers offered to me, out of the fog. The hand was warm. Alive. Through the soft white glove I could feel his pulse, beating. Even, steady. One, two.

And then another gust of howling wind and our fingers were slipping apart, and even as I scrabbled for a hold his hand melted out of my grasp, like an illusion, and only his voice remained.

"Hurry…"

"Where are you?" I shouted. My words bounced back at me, echoing off unseen walls.

It was sunrise, but I could not see the sun.

"Where are you?" I shouted again, louder, but only the echo. My nose and ears were numb, as were my fingertips. I sank to my knees. The snow fell.

He wasn't coming…he wasn't coming back.

There were birdcalls in my ears and I looked up again to see the branches of the familiar tree spreading over me. The snow was gone, the sunlight warm on my cheeks and I was wearing my cadet uniform. The ranks on my shoulders were those of wing commander.

I got to my feet slowly. I was on a hill - our hill - at the base of the tall tree that I used to nap under in the heat of the afternoon, between classes.

"I'd forgotten about this place," I said, and I felt, rather than heard, his response.

_I've never forgotten._

"I wouldn't expect you to," I returned, tearing my gaze away from the tree and slowly turning in a circle, gazing at the landscape around the hill, towards Lake Victoria to my left. The academy was there, as I remembered it, white buildings in neat lines creeping towards the hillside. The airfield to my right. The grass rippled in the breeze and the bell in the belltower tolled once, twice, signaling the start of afternoon classes.

As if there had never been a war.

_What happened here?_

His voice was shocked, and I frowned. "What do you mean?"

I smelled something burning…but there was nothing cooking in the firepit near the tree where we used to sneak away and make our dinners in the evening, and…

_What happened here?_

When I whirled to face the stretch of land below once more, the white buildings were no longer standing. Smoke filled the air, char-burnt ashes of stench, and the smell of burning flesh. The waters of the lake roiled and foamed, reflecting the fires that were all that remained of the place that had been home for almost as long as I could remember.

I clenched my hands in silent agonized memory, and as my nails dug into my palms, I cried.

_What happened here?_

"The academy…is dead," I said. "I…failed. You were there."

Lightning flashed in the sky and it began to rain, but I didn't move, didn't run from where I stood. There was a presence next to me. I didn't turn around, merely wrapped my arms around myself and looked up at the sky. The rain stung my eyes but I did not blink.

"You were there," I said again. "I failed. I couldn't win the war."

_No. No one won the war._

I could have argued that point in a hundred different ways by point and counterpoint, but it had been argued already, by the military and the government and the newscasters and the reporters, the former soldiers and the parents who had lost their children, by veterans and mourners praying over the graves of loved ones. For two years, and I was sick of war.

"I'm sorry I couldn't…I was weak. I…"

_You're not weak. You're the strongest person I know._

I tried to smile, but I didn't have the heart, merely shrugging wet shoulders. Thunder cracked in the sky overhead.

"It's a shame, you know. So much…for nothing. We were going to change the world, remember? You and I…"

_We did change the world, I think. But not in the way we planned._

"No," I echoed. "Not that way."

I felt him laugh, if illusions could laugh, if it was an illusion standing by my side looking with me into the mist and smoke that rose from the ruined academy into the clouds. "Tell me something."

_What's that?_

I unwound my arms from around my chest, feeling the collected water run down the soaked fabric and drip down my sides as it continued to rain, drops streaking down my face and my neck, between my breasts and around my hips, trickling drop by drop down the insides of my thighs like the touch of some unseen lover. The rain was warm.

"In the end…was what we did…did it mean anything?"

He was silent, and the thunder roared again, softer now, and in the darkening sky the lightning flashed, and I could see his eyes. I reached out my hand, felt him take it in his large, callused one, wrapped my fingers through his. I closed my eyes.

"You don't have to tell me that it didn't," I said quietly, "because I guess I already know. I guess…I've always known…"

_As long as it meant something to you,_ he said. _To us. To all of us, then it is enough._

And as the rain gushed down in rivulets and streams and rivers running endlessly into the great lake and the oceans beyond, and as the thunder cried and the mountains shook beneath our feet and the world crumbled around us and the great tree trunk split in two, he drew me closer to him and we fell together into the chasm.

The lightning shimmered in a beam of brilliance around us and I heard the angels singing.

And then it was dark.

"Tell me something else," I whispered into the silence, and I heard his sigh in response.

_Anything._

I gently freed myself from his embrace, my eyes still closed, my fingers grazing his cheek one last time, finding his lips as I touched them, slowly, before I let him go.

"Why did you come here?"

Though I could not see him still, even had I opened my eyes, I felt his smile as brilliant as if the clouds and the darkness had melted away and the sun was shining out of the blue sky and we were under our tree once again. And perhaps if I opened my eyes we would be, as if nothing wrong had ever happened between us and never would, that the war had never been fought and no one had ever died.

_For the first time in my life_, he said, _I wanted to do something right._

But that was only illusion.

As was he.

"No," I said softly. "No…not the first time."

He was drifting away from me and suddenly I felt a flash of fear, reaching out my hand, but he was too far away. I could sense him trying to reach me, the distance between us growing. Too fast. It was too fast.

"Don't…!"

I could feel the blood running down my body from the gaping hole in my stomach where the pain twisted and writhed like some unholy living creature. It dripped in hollow, obscene droplets with thick, murmured gurgles to some unseen space below and I felt it coating my skin, my hands and smearing my face. My blood.

I wanted to cry out but I was afraid that no one would hear. I wanted to open my eyes but I knew if I did so, everything would vanish, everything in the illusion I had created for myself. I was afraid. I had always been afraid, of losing, of being lost, of death. Of losing him most of all.

"Don't go!" I cried. "Don't leave…"

And I was falling.

And I was screaming.

And I knew I was dying.

And then I felt something warm surround me and the blood, the pain, was gone. I took a deep ragged breath, breathed in the air cool and sweet, felt myself floating, no longer falling. A dusting of pure wind across my face and the warmth increased, and there was light. And I knew that even if I opened my eyes, nothing could ever harm me again, because the dream was destined to come to this and I did not need to be afraid. Because life was just the continuing dream of sleep and dying was just a gateway to a beginning.

So this was death.

Strangely, there was no fear. There was no regret, no sorrow, nothing left undone. For the first time in my life, I felt at peace.

Because it was time for the dream to end.

"I love you," I said.

And then I woke up. 

Back to Act 6, Part 4.15 | Back to Sainan no Kekka 


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